Toyota: a perfect story of ideas, part I

Here's a great story of ideas from the book, How Toyota Became #1 by David Magee:

Sakichi Toyoda, founder of Toyota, started life as the son of a carpenter who lived several hours outside of Tokyo. The small village in which he lived depended on the textile trade. Each day, Sakichi would watch his mother and the other women of the village toil over their looms. This was in the late 1800s, and the machinery they used was physically taxing and difficult to operate.

Sakichi, hoping to ease the women's physical strain, searched for ways to make the job easier. He developed a new loom for them - one that made the chore much easier. But he wasn't satisfied with that. He spent his days observing the women and his nights developing new and better looms.

Time out - what if Sakichi had fallen prey to our old enemy "yes, but?"


He could have wanted to improved the loom, but killed all of his ideas with a, "Yes, but these women have done it this way all their lives" or a "Yes, but I'm just a kid" (he was only 23 when he got his first patent).


Instead, he looked past these obstacles and eventually acquired more than 100 patents based on his improvements. He understood the first rule of having ideas.

And he didn't stop there.

Even though his looms were a dramatic improvement for Japan (and his company was the among the most prosperous in his region), looms in Europe and the US were better. He traveled to Europe to study looms in the UK (he understood that the best ideas weren't his). And while he was there, he not only got ideas to continually improve his textile operations, he got new ideas about how to run a business.

But how did he get from looms to the #1 car company in the world?